Saul Rodriguez
December 3,2014 per.1&2 graffiti Graffiti: Art or Vandalism

I believe that Graffiti is most certainly a valid art form.Graffiti is vandalism when it is

placed on the side of a building or a car, and art when it is on a canvas on someone's wall or in a gallery. Graffiti, in its more complex forms, can be considered art because it clearly contains artistic elements, it communicates the artist's expression to the viewer, and the traditional art community has already accepted it.Foremost graffiti is illegal and it invades people's privacy and destroys their property. However, graffiti can be a means by which one can permanently express one’s self. It has the potential to send a powerful, strong message to other people who see it.
Graffiti as an art form can change people's perspective of the graffiti on walls.More recently, in the early 70's, modern day graffiti began to develop in the streets of New York and soon spread across the world. This began in the form of 'tagging' a fancy, scribble­like style of writing that purely served to represent a person's nickname. Tagging was never produced to grasp the viewer in an artistic manner and did not account for artistic style. A varied crowd of youths in New York saw this as a way of getting their name seen around the city and collecting fame. As more and more people caught on to this new thing, the trains and subways got more filled with these tags and so a need for more artistically bring designs began. A New style appeared which went beyond the elements of just a normal tag.

One common objection is that graffiti is not art because it is vandalism and accordingly a

criminal act. While it is true that it can be vandalism and a criminal act, these facts would not seem to have a manner on its status of being art. The minor fact that something is illegal or classified as vandalism hardly seems sufficient to make something fall outside of the territory of art. After all,